"Sure thing. Too late for you to be chasin' back there alone to-night, ain't it, ma?"
"That's what." Mrs. Robinson, with her arms wrapped in her apron, had joined them, and stood listening while Harry told again what had happened to Rob. As the girl gazed down through the clear darkness the scent of the wild bean floated down to her from the hillsides. The hurrying patter of water in the irrigation ditches soothed her tired brain with the magic of a spell; her head nodded and her words became indistinct.
"Say, Johnny, she's droppin' in her tracks, she's so tired!" cried Mrs. Robinson. "Take them lines and hand her down 'fore she takes a header into the ditch."
Mrs. Robinson spoke in a tone of command, and "Johnny" obeyed. Yielding the lines with honest relief that she need go no farther that night, Harry climbed down and walked stiffly to the kitchen with her hostess.
The big, half-furnished room was neat and orderly from Saturday's scrubbing. Vashti, in her Sunday starched lawn frock and new scarlet hair ribbons, smiled bashfully. Mrs. Robinson, too, with "rats" in her hair and wearing a new purple gingham dress, seemed ten years younger. As she pulled forward a chair, Harry noticed that her right hand was swathed in a bandage.
"Yes, I burnt me, like a stupid," Mrs. Robinson explained. "Everything gets in a mill at once, seems like, and I burnt up a cake and busted a plate and put my hand out of business all at once. I got kind of behind Sat'day, havin' them extry hands to feed—we've got three here irrigatin' the alfalfy. We allus feed 'em good; it gives you a name outside, and you get the pick of hands when the rush of work brings 'em into the valley. Now, here's your tea warm; come and have a snack. It ain't much, but it'll hold you till morning, anyhow."
While she was talking, Mrs. Robinson had been setting out dishes at one end of the table. Harry sat down before a bewildering array of pickles, jelly, jam, cold meat, and hot fried "side meat," cake, pie, and some warmed-over vegetables from supper. If this was a "snack," Harry wondered what a "square meal" was. She was hungry from her day in the open air; but more compelling than her need of food was her need of sleep. Even while she drank her tea and tried to tell of her experiences on the trip to Hailey, her eyelids sank leadenly. Presently, in the middle of a sentence, she saw Mrs. Robinson smiling.
"You poor young one! You're that sleepy you don't know what you're sayin'. Vashti, run get some sheets and comfortables and we'll make up the davenport in the front room."
"It's good of you to keep me overnight when I know you have a houseful already," said Harry.
"Don't you worry. Nobody but comp'ny ever sleeps in the front room."